ing far out from the land
to colonize Iceland and the Faroes, to plant a mysteriously lost nation
in Eastern Greenland, and to leave strange traces of themselves by the
vine-clad shores of Narraganset Bay. For, first of all nations and
races to steer boldly into the deep, to abandon the timid fashion of
the Past, which groped from headland to headland, as boys paddle skiffs
from wharf to wharf, the Viking met the blast and the wave, and was no
more the slave, but the lord of the sea. He it was, who, abandoning the
traditionary rule which loosened canvas only to a wind dead aft or well
on the quarter, learned to brace up sharp on a wind and to baffle the
adverse airs. Yet he, too, was overmuch a fighter to make a true
seaman, and his children no sooner set foot on the shore than they drew
their swords and went to carving the conquered land into Norman
lordships. But where they piloted the way others followed, and city
after city along the German Ocean and upon the British coasts became
also maritime. For King Alfred had come, and the English oaks were
felled, and their gnarled boughs found exceedingly convenient for the
curved knees of ships. Upon the Italian stock became engrafted the
Norman, and French, and Danish, the North German and Saxon elements.
And so, after a century of crusading had thoroughly broken up the
stay-at-home notions of Europe, the maritime spirit blazed up. Spain
and Portugal now took the lead and were running races against each
other, the one in the Western, the other in the Eastern seas, and
flaunting their crowned flags in monopoly of the Indian archipelagos
and the American tropics. Just across the North Sea, over the low
sand-dykes of Holland, scarce higher than a ship's bulwarks, looked a
race whom the spleeny wits of other nations declared to be born
web-footed. Yet their sails were found in every sea, and, like resolute
merchants, as they were, they left to others the glory while they did
the world's carrying. Their impress upon the sea-language was neither
faint nor slight. They were true marines, and from Manhattan Island to
utmost Japan, the brown, bright sides, full bows, and bulwarks tumbling
home of the Dutchman were familiar as the sea-gulls. Underneath their
clumsy-looking upper-works, the lines were true and sharp; and but the
other day, when the world's clippers were stooping their lithe
racehorse-like forms to the seas in the great ocean sweepstakes, the
fleetest of all was--a Dut